


like an atmosphere around me

by sunshine_states



Series: Triptych [3]
Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Gen, only a crossover by the skin of its teeth, post-King of Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 14:57:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19336858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshine_states/pseuds/sunshine_states
Summary: The Darkling engages in some creative problem solving.





	like an atmosphere around me

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Florence + the Machine's "How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful." This one may not make sense if you haven't read the first story in the series.

The Darkling’s dreams are full of grim, green-eyed Grisha who tell him things he can never remember and grave young men who call him _Aleksander,_ and so the Darkling does not sleep. He stays awake instead, glaring at his jailers, mulling over what it was he did to save himself in the Fold.

 

That’s the trouble with _merzost_ ; like sticking your hand in an open flame, you can never quite recall the sensation afterward. The mind shies away from the experience. He only knows that the volcra tore into his face, and in his desperation he forgot that he could not command the darkness.

 

But how, he wonders, can one _remember_ to _forget_? The strange creature who visited him two nights ago might know. But she has not shown her face since she taunted him through the bars of his cell, and she did not seem especially inclined to be helpful, anyway. The Darkling, as ever, is on his own.

 

Once, when he was younger and more sentimental, he’d asked his mother about his grandfather’s parents.

 

“Why do you want to know?” she snapped. She was cleaning a rabbit; he’d chosen this time specifically to ask because it was more difficult for her to get up and leave. “They’re dead.”

 

He shrugged a shoulder, suddenly less certain of his course of action. “I was just–curious. Did you ever meet them?”

 

“No, I did not. Stop asking silly questions.”

 

“Were they,” he said, and swallowed. “Were they like us?”

 

“They were an Inferni and a Squaller,” she said curtly. “That’s all I know. Now hand me that scraper, boy. This hide won’t cure itself.”

 

Later, when he was sick and feverish, she told him about his namesake, Aleksander Lightbringer, hero of a battle he’d never heard of, and about the boisterous, golden-haired prince that he had served. Stroking his forehead, she told him about her grandmother the Inferni, who slew a lord called Deathless. Tipping broth into his mouth, dabbing at his sweaty cheeks with a cool cloth, she told him about her father’s uncle, the sorcerer known only as the Bear.

 

“He could bring the dead to life,” she said. “All he had to do was wish it so.”

 

At the time, the Darkling thought it was just a fanciful story for a sickly boy. Now he’s less certain. He shifts in place, wincing a little at his sore muscles. This much is inescapable: if he wants to survive, he must act quickly. He suspects that Zoya has been agitating for his immediate execution, and Nikolai Lantsov, for all he is a fop and a fool, might well listen to her in time.

 

He does not want to die. He has lived a half-life all these years in not wanting to die. He has orchestrated catastrophes and stolen bodies in not wanting to die. He will not end his life in this cell. He will not kneel for the executioner or any other man. He has had enough of kneeling.

 

Something in him shifts. A golden door swinging open. Fire kindled all at once. He struggles to his feet.

 

“Stay where you are,” one of the guards snaps. The Darkling ignores her.

 

He needs the lock on the cell door to unlatch itself, and so it does. He needs the torches posted along the walls to go out, and so they do, guttering as if pinched by invisible fingers. Sunlight shafts through the bars, but that is an inconvenience, too, and the skies over Os Alta go as dark as the depths of the Fold.

 

The guards are wide-eyed, startled by how quickly their fortunes have turned. He sees the shadow-woman standing behind them, her pale eyes gleaming and intent, but she makes no move to stop him.

 

 _On my side, then,_ the Darkling thinks. _At least for now_.

 

He forgets that he was ever bound. The chains around his wrists groan and fall to the flagstones. One of the guards tries to stop his heart, but the Darkling forgets that he has that power and the pressure in his chest melts away. He strides forward, smiling, shadows spilling from his hands like smoke.

 

“What?” he asks them mockingly, as the Heartrenders reach for his vital organs and the Etherealki summon their elements. They are afraid. They are young. But they were taught according to the methods that _he_ developed over centuries, and even twelve against one will not be enough to even their odds. “You’ve seen me summon before.”

 

He slices through the first guards with a blade of shadow. He strangles the fifth and sixth with their own collars, and he bursts the hearts of guards seven through ten. The last two he robs of breath, and then he steps over their blue-lipped bodies and into the empty guardroom. The power in his blood _sings_. He smells green leaves, winter ice, lakewater. Anticipation is honey on his tongue.

 

 _He could bring the dead to life,_ his mother says, blurred by time and anguish. _All he had to do was wish it so_.

 

There are six hundred and seventy-five bodies in the Os Alta cemetery. The Darkling’s fingers curl into a fist, and the first of them opens its eyes.

 

***

 

Zoya and Genya are in the market near the palace walls when the sun goes out. Darkness falls as abruptly as if a curtain were dropped, and the people in the square suck in their breath as one. Murmurs break out, growing louder and more panicked as storm clouds boil up in the starless sky and thunder rumbles overhead.

 

Zoya swings around to stare at Genya, and then they run.

 

The side streets are empty; everyone here goes to the market in the mornings. They sprint past a startled dog and a small girl who is gazing up at the dark clouds and sobbing.

 

“This isn’t good,” Genya wheezes as they round a corner. She’s very pale beneath her scars, but her jaw is set and her single eye is hard.

 

Zoya doesn’t answer. The crackly smell of the gathering storm is everywhere. Her world has narrowed to the palace gates and the single thought, as clear and sharp as a cut diamond, that she should have killed the Darkling when she had the chance.

 

She bulls her way through the gate with a shouted order to the guards, just in time for a bolt of lightning to scythe down and cleave the double-eagle fountain in two. A hard rain begins to fall and the wind rises, thick with the smell of rot. Then the screaming begins. Zoya pushes Genya out of the way as a horde of people flow past, wild-eyed, glancing over their shoulders, bowling over the guards and stumbling over each other, heedless, bleeding. She reaches out and snags a man by the elbow.

 

“Let me go!” he wails, thrashing in her grip, but Zoya holds on grimly.

 

“What is it?” she shouts over the clamor. The fetid wind rises to a shriek around them. “What’s going on?”

 

“The cemetery,” he babbles. “The cemetery, they’re all rising – oh, _Saints_  –”

 

Zoya lets him go and he stumbles before throwing himself back into the panicking crowd. The smell of rot is thick now, filling her nostrils. Now that the crowd has gone, she can just hear it over the wind and the rain. The uneven shuffle of feet that lack the skin and sinew to work properly. The loud, labored breath of something that should not be.

It’s midnight in Os Alta, and the dead are coming.

 


End file.
